Disclaimer

We’ve passed the 100-day mark of 2024. In any environment that values good management, this milestone is significant. It reminds me of the first book I ever bought on Amazon: there, it wasn’t 100 days, but 90 — “The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting up to Speed Faster and Smarter.”

I must admit, this milestone has been bothering me and sometimes even causing me some anxiety.

One of my goals for 2024 — and a brief relevant note: I don’t usually set New Year’s resolutions; I find them a bit clichéd and bland. But this time, I decided to set a few objectives, and one of them starts right now.

Over the past seven years, a psychoanalyst encouraged me to write about everything that affected me: sadness, pain, regrets — and, why not, joys, victories, achievements, and reflections. I have an archive of these texts.

I never imagined making them public, but last year I tested it. This idea kept coming back to me throughout 2023. Perhaps that’s why I decided that 2024 would be the moment to begin.

Initially, I planned to start on December 31. But there was hesitation, fear, and insecurity. Today I realize that the text (already kept for five months) still needed maturation. And perhaps this one does too. I write without knowing if I will make it public.

The truth — and why the title is “disclaimer” — is that this text serves almost as a preemptive justification for my own anxieties about what’s to come. It feels bold to imagine that I could add something meaningful, considering so many others have much more to offer. I won’t name them; there are countless.

I am just an ordinary person. I’ve always wanted to fly under the radar. Perhaps I’ve had opportunities or academic privileges, maybe a relatively successful career. But none of that matters when writing with personal touch: you expose your fears, anxieties, uncertainties, and weaknesses.

In a world of liquid times, as Bauman said, when there was only Facebook — still far from artificial intelligence, posts with filters and marketing schedules, strategically timed texts for engagement, written by ChatGPT or ghostwriters — here I am, barefaced (I confess, with a little lack of courage). Without artificiality or artifice. Probably with coherence and cohesion errors.

The hesitation to write this disclaimer was significant. It took two vacation days combined with a weekend, in a neutral place, to seek inspiration and try to ease that pit in the stomach. Foolish illusion: inspiration is sweat, and the pit will always be there.

Brené Brown (yes, there will be many references to her) cited, in a 99U conference, a speech by Theodore Roosevelt:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust, sweat, and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and fails repeatedly, because there is no effort without error and failure; but who truly endeavors; who knows great enthusiasms, great devotions; who dedicates himself to a worthy cause; who, at best, knows the triumph of great achievements, and at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place will never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

And Brené Brown concludes:

“It’s not about winning, it’s not about losing; it’s about showing up and being seen,” being vulnerable and willing to face the consequences. She ends brilliantly: “If you’re not in the arena, willing to face the consequences, I’m not interested in your feedback.”

So, I close my disclaimer: there will be errors, personal touch, corporate nuances, criticism, suffering, musings, emotions — there will be whatever I want. This space is mine, and I decide how to use it. If you’re not willing to give constructive criticism, and only criticize for the sake of it, I’m not interested either. I see you, I hear you, but it won’t affect me.

Shame, inadequacy, and comparison will always be in the front row of critics.

And yes: I am old-fashioned. I include date and location when I write.

Balneário Camboriú/SC/BR, April 13th, 2024